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Sage Business Cloud Accounting Advanced Settings

Advanced Settings

Establishing a Connection

Authenticating to sage Business Cloud Accounting

Sage Business Cloud Accounting uses the OAuth standard to authenticate users.

Using OAuth Authentication

OAuth requires the authenticating user to interact with Sage Business Cloud Accounting using the browser. The provider facilitates this in various ways as described below.

Custom Credentials

Instead of connecting with the provider's embedded credentials, you can register an app to obtain the OAuthClientId and OAuthClientSecret.

When to Create a Custom OAuth App

Web Applications

You need to create a custom OAuth app in the web flow.

Desktop Applications

Creating a custom OAuth app is optional as the provider is already registered with Sage Business Cloud Accounting and you can connect with its embedded credentials. Create a custom OAuth app in the following scenarios:

  • If you need to request additional permissions over the provider defaults.
  • If you want to change the information displayed when users log into the Sage Business Cloud Accounting OAuth endpoint to grant permissions to the provider.

Custom Credentials

Desktop Authentication with a Custom OAuth App

Follow the steps below to authenticate with the credentials for a custom OAuth app.

 

Get an OAuth Access Token

After setting the following, you are ready to connect:

  • OAuthClientId: Set this to the App Id in your app settings.
  • OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the App Secret in your app settings.
  • CallbackURL: Set this to the Site URL in your app settings.
  • InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. You can use InitiateOAuth to avoid repeating the OAuth exchange and manually setting the OAuthAccessToken.
When you connect the provider opens the OAuth endpoint in your default browser. Log in and grant permissions to the application. The provider then completes the OAuth process:
  1. Extracts the access token from the callback URL and authenticates requests.
  2. Obtains a new access token when the old one expires.
  3. Saves OAuth values in OAuthSettingsLocation to be persisted across connections.

Web Authentication with a Custom OAuth App

When connecting via a Web application, you need to register a custom OAuth app with Sage Business Cloud Accounting. 

Get an OAuth Access Token

Set the following connection properties to obtain the OAuthAccessToken:

  • OAuthClientId: Set this to the App Id in your app settings.
  • OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the App Secret in your app settings.

 You can then call stored procedures to complete the OAuth exchange:

  1. Set the AuthMode input to WEB and set the CallbackURL input to the Redirect URI you specified in your app settings. If necessary, set the Permissions parameter to request custom permissions.

    The stored procedure returns the URL to the OAuth endpoint.

  2. Open the URL, log in, and authorize the application. You are redirected back to the callback URL.
  3. . Set the AuthMode input to WEB. Set the Verifier input to the "code" parameter in the query string of the callback URL. If necessary, set the Permissions parameter to request custom permissions.

To connect to data, set the OAuthAccessToken connection property to the access token returned by the stored procedure.

Creating a Custom OAuth App

To obtain the OAuth client credentials, follow the steps below:

  1. Log into Sage accounting Developer Account.
  2. Create a new app. Set the CallbackUrl to http://localhost:3333, or some other similar http url. If you are developing a web service, set this to the redirect uri you would like your web service to receive.
  3. The OAuthClientId is the Client Id displayed. The OAuthClientSecret is the Client Secret.

Customizing the SSL Configuration

 By default, the provider attempts to negotiate SSL/TLS by checking the server's certificate against the system's trusted certificate store. To specify another certificate, see the SSLServerCert property for the available formats to do so.

Connecting Through a Firewall or Proxy

HTTP Proxies

To connect through the Windows system proxy, you do not need to set any additional connection properties. To connect to other proxies, set ProxyAutoDetect to false.

In addition, to authenticate to an HTTP proxy, set ProxyAuthScheme, ProxyUser, and ProxyPassword, in addition to ProxyServer and ProxyPort.

Other Proxies

Set the following properties:

  • To use a proxy-based firewall, set FirewallType, FirewallServer, and FirewallPort.
  • To tunnel the connection, set FirewallType to TUNNEL.
  • To authenticate, specify FirewallUser and FirewallPassword.
  • To authenticate to a SOCKS proxy, additionally set FirewallType to SOCKS5.

Troubleshooting the Connection

To show provider activity from query execution to network traffic, use Logfile and Verbosity. The examples of common connection errors below show how to use these properties to get more context. Contact the support team for help tracing the source of an error or circumventing a performance issue.

  • Authentication errors: Typically, recording a Logfile at Verbosity 4 is necessary to get full details on an authentication error.
  • Queries time out: A server that takes too long to respond will exceed the provider's client-side timeout. Often, setting the Timeout property to a higher value will avoid a connection error. Another option is to disable the timeout by setting the property to 0. Setting Verbosity to 2 will show where the time is being spent.
  • The certificate presented by the server cannot be validated: This error indicates that the provider cannot validate the server's certificate through the chain of trust. If you are using a self-signed certificate, there is only one certificate in the chain.

    To resolve this error, you must verify yourself that the certificate can be trusted and specify to the provider that you trust the certificate. One way you can specify that you trust a certificate is to add the certificate to the trusted system store; another is to set SSLServerCert.